Sugar That Reprograms Your Brain

When it comes to losing weight, your own brain may be working against you. And big food manufacturers may be to blame.

Your brain's complex chemistry affects what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat. Throw off the delicate balance, and you'll trigger overeating, food cravings, and a loss of willpower. They all team up to sabotage any effort you make to lose weight.

Unfortunately, a huge number of foods on your grocery store shelves are laden with a sweetener that attacks your brain chemistry. So nearly everyone in America is fighting a losing battle against weight gain.

The culprit is high fructose corn syrup – a manufactured sugar that food producers swear is as harmless as any other sugar. In fact, they have multi-million dollar "public service" campaigns in place to make you believe it.

But don't be fooled.

Brain Mapping Shows What Food Manufacturers Deny

Purveyors of high fructose corn syrup claim it's almost identical to common table sugar and doesn't affect the body any differently. When it comes to chemistry, "almost" is a loaded word. Water and hydrogen peroxide are almost identical, too. But you can't drink hydrogen peroxide by the glassful unless you have a death wish. And water isn't nearly as good for cleaning wounds.

When scientists decided to map brain responses in healthy, normal-weight people after drinking a glucose-sweetened drink versus a fructose-sweetened drink, they got visual evidence of the different effects the two sugars have on your system.

Glucose switches off the areas of the brain associated with appetite. In other words, glucose makes you feel full. Fructose doesn't trigger the same activity. When you take in a bunch of calories packed with high fructose corn syrup, your brain doesn't get the message that you're full.

So you keep eating.

Take Control Of Your Brain Chemistry and Stop the Weight Gain

Bringing your brain back into balance will help you put a stop to weight gain and can help make it easier to lose weight.

1. Cut high fructose corn syrup.

Obviously, the first step to reversing the bad effects of high fructose corn syrup on your brain chemistry is to begin cutting it out of your diet.

The first place to look is sweetened drinks. Most sodas in the U.S. are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Energy drinks. Juice drinks. Canned iced coffees. They're the worst offenders when it comes to high-fructose. They also pack in a lot of calories and zero nutrition.

My suggestion is that if you're a regular soda drinker – and statistics suggest nearly half of Americans have at least a soda a day – switch to natural fruit juice, home-brewed tea, or good, old-fashioned water. If you're worried about missing out on soda, make it a weekend treat or look for sodas sweetened with real sugar. Coke and Pepsi imported from Mexico use real sugar cane and so do Hansen's brand sodas.

2. Eat At Peak "Brain Hunger" Times

Another way to stop your brain from sabotaging your health has to do with hormones. Hormones play a big role in energy levels, appetite, and mood.

The hormone ghrelin specifically triggers your body's hunger signals. You can't shut off ghrelin production, but you can work with it instead of against it. People's ghrelin production peaks at 8am, 12pm, 3pm (a smaller peak) and 6pm. Try scheduling your meals and snacks for those times.

3. Eat Foods That Counter the Urge to Eat

When you eat, include foods that counter ghrelin. Foods that are either rich in protein or fiber and digest slowly work best. Try things like lean beef, plain yogurt, fish, oatmeal, or sweet potatoes.

Cutting out most of the high fructose corn syrup in your diet, eating at times that make sense, and focusing on foods that will keep you full for longer can help bring your brain chemistry back into balance. And that will make your weight loss goals much easier to achieve.

Source: Health Edge

South Carolina study shows flaws in NHANES data

Four decades of nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be invalid because the method used to collect the data was seriously flawed, according to a new study by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina.

The study, led by Arnold School exercise scientist and epidemiologist Edward Archer, has demonstrated significant limitations in the measurement protocols used in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The findings, published in PLOS ONE (The Public Library of Science), reveal that a majority of the nutrition data collected by the NHANES are not “physiologically credible,” Archer said.

These results suggest that without valid population-level data, speculations regarding the role of energy intake in the rise in the prevalence of obesity are without empirical support, he said.

The NHANES is the most comprehensive compilation of data on the health of children and adults in the United States. The survey combines interviews of self-reported food and beverage consumption over 24 hours and physical examinations to assess the health and nutritional status of the US population. Conducted by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the NHANES is the primary source of data used by researchers studying the impact of nutrition and diet on health.

The study examined data from 28,993 men and 34,369 women, 20 to 74 years old, from NHANES I (1971 – 1974) through NHANES (2009 – 2010), and looked at the caloric intake of the participants and their energy expenditure, predicted by height, weight, age and sex. The results show that — based on the self-reported recall of food and beverages — the vast majority of the NHANES data “are physiologically implausible, and therefore invalid,” Archer said.

In other words, the “calories in” reported by participants and the “calories out,” don’t add up and it would be impossible to survive on most of the reported energy intakes. This misreporting of energy intake varied among participants, and was greatest in obese men and women who underreported their intake by an average 25 percent and 41 percent (i.e., 716 and 856 Calories per-day respectively).

“Throughout its history, the NHANES survey has failed to provide accurate estimates of the habitual caloric consumption of the U.S. population,” Archer said. “Although improvements were made to the NHANES measurement protocol after 1980, there was little improvement to the validity of U.S. nutritional surveillance.”

These limitations “suggest that the ability to estimate population trends in caloric intake and generate public policy relevant to diet-health relationships is extremely limited,” said Archer, who conducted the study with colleagues at the Arnold School.

“The nation’s major surveillance tool for studying the relationships between nutrition and health is not valid. It is time to stop spending tens of millions of health research dollars collecting invalid data and find more accurate measures,” he said.

by Jeff Stensland


Read the Full Study Here.

Probiotics Prevent Gluten Sensitivity and Intestinal Damage from Gliadin

In a startling paper discussing treatment alternatives for celiac disease, research from George Washington University School of Medicine finds that probiotics provide a viable solution for gluten digestion and intestinal health – and likely their absence provides the smoking gun for the cause of gluten sensitivities.

Celiac disease – an inflammatory immune response to the gliadin protein in gluten – has been increasing over the past few years, and research is illustrating that celiac disease is more prevalent than previously considered.

Gluten sensitivities also appear to be increasing, with more and more people in western countries – especially in the U.S. – opting for gluten-free diets. This typically comes from a sense many have had that the gluten foods in their diet produce intestinal irritations, including bloating and indigestion. For this reason, the term “gluten-free” has become ubiquitous among health food stores and consumers.

Meanwhile, we find that grain-based foods have been part of the human diet for thousands of years, and some of the healthiest diets – including the Mediterranean Diet – contain gracious quantities of wheat and other whole grains. This is not to mention of course the fiber content among whole grains and the research that has shown foods rich in fiber reduce heart disease and other metabolic disorders.

And many traditional societies – producing the diets of a majority of the world’s population, many of which are known for long lifespans – have grains as the cornerstone of their diet. These cultures also come with an absence of a history of intestinal problems.

This leads to the logical question: Has humanity really been poisoning itself with wheat and other gluten-containing grains (including barley, rye and others)? Or could there be something else going on?

The gluten mystery is solved

The mystery appears to have been solved, as significant research focus and several teams of investigators have confirmed that the inflammatory response to gliadin – initiated with an interleukin-15 mediated response – is inhibited by healthy intestinal probiotics.

A 2012 paper by three medical school professors studied the various means by which the effects of celiac disease may be mitigated – by inhibiting the inflammatory response. The paper’s authors include two professors who are gastroenterology professors at George Washington University School of Medicine, Anita Bakshi, M.D.and Sindu Stephen, M.D. Two other clinical M.D.s co-authored the research.

The researchers focused first upon the mechanisms of wheat gliadin protein upon the intestinal cells – which produce inflammation and intestinal permeability. These include the activation of a CD4+ T-cell response among the intestinal cells – which induces the secretion of a protein called zonulin. Zonulin then stimulates an increase in the spaces in the tight junctions between the intestinal cells, creating gut permeability.


This opening between intestinal cells is accompanied by an even greater inflammatory response as the immune system responds to larger proteins having potential contact with the bloodstream.
While there are a number of studies that have shown these effects, the researchers singled out a few studies that clearly and specifically  illustrated how intestinal probiotics in a healthy body will inhibit this process by breaking down gluten through protease (enzyme) activity.
In one of these, Irish researchers found that two enzymes produced from probiotic bacteria – prolyl endopeptidase and endoprotease B – were able to break down gluten into non-reactive elements, completely sidestepping the possible intestinal response.

This research was confirmed in a clinical setting by scientists at the Celiac Sprue Research Foundation in Palo Alto, California. Here 20 celiac patients were given small doses of gluten with and without (double-blind, randomized, cross-over) being pretreated with one of these probiotic-produced enzymes – prolyl endopeptidase. The cross-over study utilized two 14-day treatment periods in total, in a staged format.

The pretreatment with the enzyme allowed a majority of the celiac patients to avoid malabsorption of carbohydrates and fats – a typical symptom of celiac sprue response.
The researchers concluded that:

“Pretreatment of gluten with prolyl endopeptidase avoided the development of fat or carbohydrate malabsorption in the majority of those patients who developed fat or carbohydrate malabsorption after a 2-week gluten challenge.”

In a series of studies from Finland’s University of Tampere Medical School, researchers tested the probiotics strains Lactobacillus fermentum and Bifidobacterium lactis with gluten digestion and the inflammatory effects of gliadin.

They found that these live probiotics were both able to inhibit the inflammation response among sensitive intestinal (Caco-2) cells. In both instances the probiotics prevented the inflammatory response as well as prevented the formation of “membrane ruffles.”

The researchers stated:

“B. lactis inhibited the gliadin-induced increase dose-dependently in epithelial permeability, higher concentrations completely abolishing the gliadin-induced decrease in transepithelial resistance.”

This of course means the probiotics reduced the amount of intestinal damage caused by the inflammatory response related to the gluten ingestion.
And in their conclusion, the researchers stated:

“We conclude thus that live B. lactis bacteria can counteract directly the harmful effects exerted by coeliac-toxic gliadin and would clearly warrant further studies of its potential as a novel dietary supplement in the treatment of coeliac disease.”

While the inflammatory response in celiac sprue is typically described as being the result of a genetic abnormality, intestinal irritation and indigestion to gluten in non-celiac people provokes similar mechanisms of inflammation – though not as vigorous – and not linked with genetic abnormality (yet).

The UGW researchers concluded after reviewing the research that:

“Inclusion of probiotics appears to be able to reduce the damage caused by eating gluten-contaminated foods and may even accelerate mucosal healing after the initiation of a gluten-free diet.”

These results have been confirmed by other research. In a study from earlier this year, researchers from Argentina’s University of Buenos Aires tested a probiotic supplement with 22 adults with celiac disease. The patients were given either capsules with the probiotic Bifidobacterium infantis or a placebo for 3 weeks.

Those taking the probiotic supplement had significantly lower levels of indigestion, constipation and other intestinal symptoms as gauged by the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale. Levels of IgA antibodies to gluten were also lower among the probiotic group.
The researchers stated:

“The study suggests that B. infantis may alleviate symptoms in untreated celiac disease.”

How celiac research applies to gluten intolerance

Certainly adult celiac patients are dealing with a dramatically heightened genetic response to the gluten protein, which is significantly greater than what is experienced by those even with some gluten sensitivity. And we cannot necessarily suggest that the the inflammatory immune response of a celiac sprue patient can be completely eliminated by gliadin enzymes released by probiotics, which break down those gliadin proteins. This is because the gliadin genetic imprint may still be recognized by the immune system – producing the antibody-driven inflammatory response.

However, the non-genetic  immune response that produces some bloating and/or indigestion for non-celiac people sensitive to gluten has many of the same mechanisms – especially when it comes to creating intestinal permeability. And the research is showing that even among celiac patients, symptoms of gluten intolerance are reduced. So it would only be logical to conclude – as have many researchers – that gluten sensitivities outside of celiac disease may be alleviated with healthy intestinal flora.

We also have only been looking through a narrow beam of research investigating only a few enzymes and probiotics. A healthy human intestine is a microcosm of thousands of strains of probiotic bacteria which produce a myriad of enzymes that assist our body with the digestion of nature’s foods. So we are merely scratching the surface, yet the surface truly reveals the culprits involved.

After reviewing the research (before this last study), the GW medical professors supported this conclusion by stating:

“Supplementation with a variety of bacterial strains can help inhibit gluten/gliadin-induced damage in the small intestine.”

The ‘smoking gun’ for growing gluten sensitivities is identified

The research clearly identifies the smoking gun for the growth of intestinal irritability and gluten insensitivity: The steady and growing destruction of healthy probiotics within our intestines through an unbridled use of antibiotics and antiseptics.

When we examine the evidence: The fact that gluten sensitivities have been growing as the use of antibiotics and antiseptics have become increasingly utilized together with the findings that enzymes produced by probiotics break down gluten and gliadin into non-toxic constituents, we can only arrive at the conclusion that our gut microflora has everything to do with wheat and other gluten sensitivities.

And with this conclusion, avoiding all forms of gluten in our diets can not only be an arduous and close to impossible task – but it may become unnecessary if we learn to maintain healthy intestinal probiotics.

Wheat and grains are necessary for healthy intestinal probiotics

In fact, research from UK researchers has determined that gluten grains – and wheat in particular – also provide critical nourishment (prebiotics) for our intestinal probiotics. This has now been established in a number of laboratory and human clinical studies over the past couple of years.
For example, in research led by Professor of Food Microbial Sciences at the UK’s University of Reading, Dr. Glenn Gibson, 55 healthy men and women were given different doses of a wheat bran for three weeks. Those eating more wheat bran showed an increase in healthy probiotic bifidobacteria in their intestines and colons.

Another study led by Dr. Gibson tested 40 adults, and found the same conclusion: A polysaccharide named arabino-xylan-oligosaccharide – a component of wheat bran – was found to be the prebiotic. After many additional studies, it has been confirmed that arabino-xylan-oligosaccharide is critical for the health of our intestinal probiotics – and this nutrient is now considered a prebiotic.


Read the full article here: http://www.realnatural.org/probiotics-prevent-gluten-sensitivity-and-intestinal-damage-from-gliadin/

About the Author

Case Adams is a California Naturopath and holds a Ph.D. in Natural Health Sciences. His focus is upon science-based natural health solutions. He is the author of 25 books on natural health and numerous print and internet articles. A listing and description of many of his books can be found on Realnatural.org.  His new video series on low back pain can be found at Healthy-back.net.

REFERENCES:
Bakshi A, Stephen S, Borum ML, Doman DB. Emerging therapeutic options for celiac disease: potential alternatives to a gluten-free diet. Gastroenterol Hepatol (N Y). 2012 Sep;8(9):582-8.

Pyle GG, Paaso B, Anderson BE, Allen DD, Marti T, Li Q, Siegel M, Khosla C, Gray GM. Effect of pretreatment of food gluten with prolyl endopeptidase on gluten-induced malabsorption in celiac sprue. Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2005 Jul;3(7):687-94.

Lindfors K, Blomqvist T, Juuti-Uusitalo K, Stenman S, Venäläinen J, Mäki M, Kaukinen K. Live probiotic Bifidobacterium lactis bacteria inhibit the toxic effects induced by wheat gliadin in epithelial cell culture. Clin Exp Immunol. 2008 Jun;152(3):552-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2249.2008.03635.x.

Stenman SM, Venäläinen JI, Lindfors K, Auriola S, Mauriala T, Kaukovirta-Norja A, Jantunen A, Laurila K, Qiao SW, Sollid LM, Männisto PT, Kaukinen K, Mäki M. Enzymatic detoxification of gluten by germinating wheat proteases: implications for new treatment of celiac disease. Ann Med. 2009;41(5):390-400. doi: 10.1080/07853890902878138.

Smecuol E, Hwang HJ, Sugai E, Corso L, Cherñavsky AC, Bellavite FP, González A, Vodánovich F, Moreno ML, Vázquez H, Lozano G, Niveloni S, Mazure R, Meddings J, Mauriño E, Bai JC. Exploratory, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study on the effects of Bifidobacterium infantis natren life start strain super strain in active celiac disease. J Clin Gastroenterol. 2013 Feb;47(2):139-47. doi: 10.1097/MCG.0b013e31827759ac.

Maki KC, Gibson GR, Dickmann RS, Kendall CW, Oliver Chen CY, Costabile A, Comelli EM, McKay DL, Almeida NG, Jenkins D, Zello GA, Blumberg JB. Digestive and physiologic effects of a wheat bran extract, arabino-xylan-oligosaccharide, in breakfast cereal. Nutrition. 2012 Jul 6.

Walton GE, Lu C, Trogh I, Arnaut F, Gibson GR. A randomised, double-blind, placebo controlled cross-over study to determine the gastrointestinal effects of consumption of arabinoxylanoligosaccharides enriched bread in healthy volunteers. Nutr J. 2012 Jun 1;11(1):36.

L-carnitine Vilified By Mainstream Press

Not since Oprah herself swore another hamburger would never pass her lips has there been so much mainstream press about beef.

But this time, it's not the cattle ranchers who are up in arms...it's the nutritional industry. Because in this attack, the mainstream has one of our own in its cross-hairs.

The supposed "danger" of L-carnitine is utter nonsense and has been blown way out of proportion to bump up ratings and sell more magazines.

L-carnitine is an amino acid in red meat, chicken, seafood, dairy, and other proteins.

According to a new study, L-carnitine might set off a series of actions in your gut that creates a compound called TMAO. This compound might also cause heart disease in mice. And in a small trial with humans, meat-eaters had higher TMAO levels compared to vegetarians.

Well the media jumped on this like a junebug! They threw down the cards and declared L-carnitine the "culprit" behind heart disease. But even The New York Times (which piled on against L-carnitine) admitted that there's no link between TMAO and heart disease in humans. It's all connect-the-dots theory.

The reporting also conveniently fails to even mention the many studies that have clearly linked L-carnitine with heart health support.

So there is clearly no need to dump your L-carnitine supplement.

And there's also a little confusion. What's the difference between L-carnitine and acetyl L-carnitine (ALC)?

Good question. Because both are essential in different ways.

L-carnitine delivers valuable fatty acids to your mitochondria - the powerhouses of your cells. It also helps convert body fat into fuel. And that boosts your energy levels.

Research also shows that L-carnitine protects heart muscle cells from heart attack damage. In a recent Mayo Clinic review of 13 studies, L-carnitine supplements reduced all-cause mortality when used as preventive therapy after heart attack.

And those are real-world results at one of the world's most respected institutions.

ALC is one of the types of L-carnitine. But ALC goes to work on your brain. It stimulates a key neurotransmitter that supports memory function. It also prevents brain-cell death, and protects nerve cells from age-related degeneration.

If you use ALC, your body converts some of it into L-carnitine. So an ALC supplement actually delivers both forms of this valuable amino acid.

If you're really worried about your heart health, maybe you should throw out the New York Times instead of your supplements!

...and speaking of supplements for you heart health here are some suggestions.

Enriching Gifts Red Heart Algae
Enriching Gifts Metabolic Complete
Womega Fish Oil
Wellgenix Resveratrol

Calcium may lower mortality risk for women

Taking a calcium supplement of up to 1,000 milligrams per day can help women live longer, according to a Canadian study.

Although calcium is an essential nutrient for bone health, past studies have linked calcium supplements to heart disease risk, according to background information in the study, which is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Researchers analyzing data from the large-scale Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study sought to clarify this issue and found moderate doses of calcium supplements had a beneficial effect in women, although there was no statistical benefit for men. The researchers also found no conclusive evidence that vitamin D had an impact on mortality.

"Our study found daily use of calcium supplements was associated with a lower risk of death among women," the study’s senior author, David Goltzman, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, said in a news release. "The benefit was seen for women who took doses of up to 1,000 mg per day, regardless of whether the supplement contained vitamin D."

The longitudinal cohort study monitored the health of 9,033 Canadians between 1995 and 2007. During that period, 1,160 participants died. Women who took up to 1,000 mg per day of calcium had a 22% lower risk of dying compared with women who did not take calcium supplements.

"Higher amounts of calcium were potentially linked to longer lifespans in women, regardless of the source of the calcium," Goltzman said. "That is, the same benefits were seen when the calcium came from dairy foods, non-dairy foods or supplements."

The study fails to consider the quality of the calcium supplement. 1000mg of calcium carbonate is the same as 1000mg of limestone, the body doesn't assimilate it. It's like eating chalk. Is that really all that good for the body?

A good coral calcium that is harvested and processed without exposure to air is easily digested by the body. The other nutrients that are available also makes a difference. Calcium needs to be kept in balance with potassium and magnesium for ultimate use by the body.

Two excellent sources for your protein needs are Enriching Gifts Coral Coral Life and Enzyme Research Products Calcium, Magnesium and Potassium.

Breast Cancer

There has been a lot of talk lately about breast cancer. Angelina Jolie found out she had a genetic marker for breast cancer and announced to the world that she had both breast surgically removed to prevent her from getting breast cancer. If you don’t have breasts they can’t become cancerous. They also cannot feed a child nor do anything else they were intended to do. But has this really protected her from cancer, or just moved to another part of the body where she might not be as vigilant in watching?

You need to look at the cause of cancer. If you look to the media for information you will think that cancer is just bad luck or genetics, but that isn’t the truth. Cancer is a toxicity disease. Every time our cells encounter toxicity there is the possibility of mutation. Our immune system is designed to seek out and destroy those mutations. We get what we call cancer when there are more mutations than our immune system can destroy.

If you think of your genetic makeup as a piece of cloth there are weak and strong points in the cloth. The BRCA1 gene simply told Angelina that her breast tissue is one of her weak points. Her solution is to cut that portion out of the cloth. Now that cloth has a hole in it. The toxins are not going to happily slip through that hole and out of her body. They are going to accumulate in another part of the body.

Think about it. You live on the side of a hill in a beautiful house, with a swimming pool. One day raw sewage starts flowing down the hill and into your beautiful swimming pool. Do you simply get rid of the pool? Does that solve your problem? No, the sewage is going to simply start stacking up somewhere else. Any reasonable person is going to climb the hill and find out where the sewage is coming from. Then they are going to do everything they can to stop the sewage and to clean up what is already on their property.

We need to be a good property owner of our bodies. We need to look for sources of sewage in our lives and stop them. Where do we pick up sewage? It comes in many forms during our normal lifestyle. Eating foods that are genetically modified or covered in pesticides creates sewage. Eating food that is filled with hormones and antibiotics creates sewage. Eating and drinking from plastic containers creates sewage. Using chemicals on our hair, skin or nails creates sewage. Drinking chlorinated and fluoridated water creates sewage. Breathing polluted air, or smoking creates sewage. Living a stressful life creates sewage.

As you can see it is very difficult to avoid the sewage. Are we then simply doomed to have cancer? Many people believe we are. Others have found that if you give your body the tools that it needs it can clean up the sewage before it can do any damage. Think of a parade. If the pooper scooper is right behind the horse troupe, and if they are doing a good job, then none of the people marching behind the horses need to step in any poop. Our pooper scoopers come in several forms. They are called nutrients. Recent studies have shown that with the right nutrition we can keep our bodies clean.

One of these nutrients is known as Omega 3 fatty acids. When people hear that term they think of fish oil. Some people swear by a form known as krill oil. A krill is a tiny fish that lives in arctic waters. 

But, there are other ways to get your Omega 3’s. Flax seed is a plant source of Omega 3’s. Recent studies show that flax seeds can reduce breast cancer cells by 28%. This is after you have developed cancer! If we simply include some flax seeds in our daily living we have a good chance of avoiding the cancer in the first place. But, fish and flax are not the only sources of Omega 3’s. They have been found in meat and dairy. Organically grown meat and dairy have high rates of Omega 3’s instead of the Omega 6 fatty acids found in commercially grown meat and dairy.

B Vitamins have been shown to lower your risk of breast cancer. Part of this is due to their anti-inflammatory properties. They are also considered antioxidants.  B vitamins are found in leafy green vegetables and citrus fruits. Just make sure they are organic, and then they will have more of the good stuff, without the bad stuff.

Exercise is showing to be as important as nutrition in the prevention, and even in surviving cancer.  When it comes to women and breast cancer it is felt that exercise lowers the estrogen levels. Too much estrogen has had a strong link to cancer in numerous studies. Things that raise estrogen levels are soy products and plastics.

If you have not lived a clean life you will probably want to think about detoxifying your body. The Gerson Group has had wonderful success in treating cancer through an intensive program of detoxification and nutrition. There are numerous websites and books that can walk you through their system of colon hydrotherapy and coffee enemas that they link with specific juicing protocols.

What doesn’t work in preventing breast cancer is mammography. The concept of mammography is to locate the cancer early, but it doesn’t really work that way. Numerous women have had intensive treatment for cancer that they found out later wasn’t really there. In other cases the doctor’s realized the cancer had never been there, but didn’t tell the women. That isn’t the worst part. The radiation absorbed into the breast tissue actually causes cancer! If you are an ‘at risk’ woman who is told to start mammography early in life and are diligent to have it yearly you are almost certain to develop breast cancer. You are causing it with the radiation they are telling you will prevent it. Thermography does a better job of finding the cancer, without the risks.

The key to being cancer free is detoxification and fortification. You can think of it as cleaning up the sewage that has already come down the hill, and stopping any more from coming. In that way your body’s defenses can patrol the area and keep it clean of any additional sewage.

Sources:

http://www.naturalnews.com/039545_cancer_prevention_men.html

http://www.naturalnews.com/039779_mammograms_breast_cancer_prevention.html

You Have Diabetes? Now What?

If you find yourself confused and uncertain about the best health choices now that you have diabetes, let me share some strategies and tips that can help.

Prescriptions drugs are available to help with all of these, but the more you can do with safe and natural solutions, the better off you'll be.

Type-2 diabetes is the result of genetics to some degree. But lifestyle choices also contribute to its development and progression in a big way. Eating a diet high in processed foods, sugary snacks, and low-fiber carbohydrates can contribute to the onset of diabetes and make your condition worse.

Carbohydrates, especially simple sugars and starches, spike your blood sugar levels. Your body responds by producing insulin to move the excess glucose from your blood into your cells where it can be burned as energy. The development of insulin resistance isn't well understood, but once it takes hold, your blood sugar and blood insulin level become chronically high, and that puts you on the path to diabetes.

The first step in controlling your blood sugar levels is to eat a smarter diet. First, cut out processed carbohydrates except on special occasions. White bread, white rice, baked goods, and sugary drinks can spike your glucose levels. Foods high in fiber – even carbohydrates – tend to help control your blood sugar levels. 

Whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds are all excellent options. In studies, people who eat more fiber on a regular basis are less likely to develop diabetes because of better blood sugar control. Fruits and vegetables are also an important part of a healthy diet, but seem to have less effect on blood sugar management. Build your meals around whole grains, lean proteins like fish, vegetables, and healthy fats like olive oil. This is the best approach to eating for blood sugar control and overall health.

For optimum blood sugar control, what you eat is important, but so is when you eat it. You want to give your body steady nutrition throughout the day, including plenty of slow-burn carbohydrates to keep your blood sugar even. Plan your meal times and snack times, and try to eat at the same times each day. Also have roughly the same serving sizes of carbohydrates day over day. For example, a bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal has 27 grams of carbs.

The older many people get, the greater tendency there is to seek pleasure and avoid getting outside their comfort zone. Resist this at all costs by embracing anabolic stress. Working with weights and stressing your body with rigorous exercise is the best thing you can do to just say no to premature old age.

No magic pills. At least thirty minutes a day of exercise, whether it's walking, cardio, interval training, or weight training, can go a long way to helping you become more fit and to lose weight if you need to. It also helps manage your blood sugar. When you exercise, your body burns stores of glycogen. When you burn off glycogen, it allows your body to use glucose more efficiently.

The third step is to try natural supplements that have proven to have a positive effect on blood sugar, insulin levels, and overall metabolism. Some supplements to consider include:

• Chromium: Improves the action of insulin in your body and may help with blood sugar management. Take up to 1000 micrograms a day.
  
  
• Cinnamon: A quarter teaspoon of cinnamon each day helps to lower blood sugar.
  
  
• Alpha Lipoic Acid: Reduces insulin resistance and also protects your nerves and cells from damage caused by high blood sugar and insulin. Take 600 grams a day.
  
  
• Magnesium: Lowers insulin resistance and helps protect you against complications like eye problems. Men should take 420 milligrams per day. Women should take 320 mg daily.

The great thing about eating, exercising and taking supplements to control your blood sugar is that these steps also help to control your cholesterol levels, protect your heart from disease, and lower your blood pressure. A diet rich in fiber, lean protein, and healthy fats is an effective way to control cholesterol levels. And regular exercise can help you maintain healthy blood pressure levels. No medication your doctor can prescribe offer this many benefits.

But there are some additional steps you can take to protect yourself even further:

1. Add in a fish oil supplement. The omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil can support good heart health and lower your triglyceride levels.
   
   
2. Try a ginseng supplement. In small studies, ginseng has helped to lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL cholesterol levels significantly. More research is still needed, but initial results are promising.

Living with type-2 diabetes is serious business. But it's very manageable if you take charge. By making a commitment to eat right, exercise and take supplements to help control your blood sugar, cholesterol, and blood pressure levels, you'll make strides toward maintaining good health and preventing the devastating complications diabetes can cause.

Ghee whiz. Butter isn't bad.

We've been told for decades that butter is bad for you. But the right form of butter may be useful in relieving joint stiffness and chronic pain.

Even with the backlash against margarine and other spreads that come from factories, not from cows, a lot of people are still suspicious of all-natural butter.

But the truth about butter – and especially a very specific kind of butter – is really quite different. Butter has been used as a staple food for thousands of years. And, clarified butter (known by the kind of weird word 'ghee' [pronounced "gee" as in "gee whiz"] in India where it got its origins) has been prized for its health benefits for millennia. 

We Were Duped into Believing Butter Is Bad for Us

But as America began expanding around the waistline and as heart disease rates exploded in the 1960s and 70s, fat and cholesterol in our diet got most of the blame.

Butter is basically pure fat. A tablespoon of butter contains 14 grams of fat, including 8 grams of saturated fat. It also has 30 mg of cholesterol. So, under the thought that fats, and particularly saturated fats, are bad for you, butter became a taboo food for many.

What people didn't realize was that while heart disease had been going up, butter consumption had been on the decline – people had been trading it in for margarine. With the low-fat diet craze, butter consumption fell even further, and the use of processed spreads like margarine rose even more. Heart disease, diabetes, and obesity continued to climb right along with our intake of processed foods.

Only recently have nutritionists and medical scientists come to realize that your body needs fat – even saturated fat. That means you can enjoy real butter – the great taste, the versatility – and get some great health benefits, too. 

The Real Skinny on Butter

Butter can play an important and healthful role in your diet as long as you follow a few simple guidelines.

The best kind of butter to use is clarified butter, often called by its Indian name, ghee. Ghee is made by melting butter over low heat to remove much of the moisture. The melted mixture is then strained to remove caramelized milk solids. You're left with a pure, rich buttery substance that is excellent for cooking.

And it's good for you! 

Consuming purified butter like ghee delivers vitamin A, which is essential for good adrenal health; lecithin, which helps your body metabolize cholesterol; antioxidants like vitamin E and selenium; and conjugated linoleic acid, which promotes a strong immune system. Foods like ghee can promote proper hormone balance, good heart health, and better energy levels.

Best Butter for Better Health 

The main difference between ghee and straight butter is that the impurities have been removed from ghee. You get all the health benefits without the drawbacks. Despite being a high-fat food, ghee offers a number of health benefits when you use it in moderation. Two tablespoons or less of ghee a day can help to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, especially if the balance of fats in your diet comes from plant sources – a fact that hasn't been confirmed about regular butter.

Fats like butter and ghee are made of fatty acids, which get categorized as short-chain, medium-chain, and long-chain. Stick with me – I'll show you why this matters. Long-chain fatty acids tend to be the most damaging to your heart health. Compared with butter, ghee contains a higher percentage of short- and medium-chain fatty acids and a lower percentage of long-chain fatty acids, making it more beneficial for your health.

Ghee also has one of the highest smoke points that you'll find in a fat, making it ideal for cooking. Many fats begin smoking below 400 degrees, but ghee's smoke point can be as high as 500 degrees. When an oil or fat reaches its smoke point, heat damage occurs, and that can trigger the production of compounds that, when you eat the food, will increase the level of free radicals in your body. By cooking with ghee, you make healthier food that is less likely to cause the kind of free radical damage associated with premature aging.

In Ayurvedic medicine, ghee is prescribed for people with joint stiffness and chronic pain. Ghee helps to lubricate connective tissues, which can relieve pain and promote flexibility.

Traditionally, ghee is prepared in India according to their own customs. But as word has gotten out about the amazing health benefits of ghee, about its versatility in cooking, and about its rich, pure flavor, it's grown in popularity. Many companies around the world now produce and offer ghee, so you have a lot of options. You can find ghee at your local health food store or you can even buy high-quality butter and make you own.

However you get it, ghee is definitely worth adding to your daily diet. It's a food that truly is good and good for you. 

Another great saturated fat to cook with is coconut oil. More about coconut oil here ...

Better nutrition helps against dementia

 

If you've ever had or cared for a loved one suffering from dementia, you know what a hopeless feeling it can be. 

Dementia cruelly attacks not only our loved ones' cherished memories and cognitive skills -- it often leaves them physically and emotionally wasting away, as they succumb to depression and even begin refusing foods they once loved.

I understand the heartbreak of caring for a loved one with dementia. 

And now there's a ray of hope on the horizon for dementia sufferers and their caregivers, thanks to an intriguing new study out of Taiwan.

Researchers from the National Yang-Ming University set out to improve quality of life for millions of people currently suffering from dementia. And these researchers noticed the same things we all notice -- as many dementia sufferers surrender to depression and cut back on eating and physical activity, their physical condition declines rapidly.

So instead of attacking the problem with some toxic, side-effect-laden prescription pill, the researchers tackled the problem another way -- with a fork.

More than five dozen dementia sufferers underwent memory training exercises that were designed to help them remember proper nutritional habits and to eat more regularly. The trick, it appears, is to get patients to remember the same thing over increasing lengths of time.

And if you think memory training can't work for dementia patients, think again. The patients who received memory training were able to dramatically slow their emotional and physical declines.

Patients who were trained to remember proper nutrition were able to increase their body mass index and significantly reduce their scores on a common depression scale -- all in just six months.

Dementia always effects more than just one person. It takes a terrible physical and emotional toll on both patients and their caregivers. If a loved one is suffering from dementia, don't give up hope and don't watch him slowly disappear into the couch. By working with your loved one to maintain proper eating habits, you may improve his quality of life and lengthen the time you have together.
 
Since nutrition is so important, that also means that proper digestion is right up there. Make sure you are getting a good digestive enzyme. 

7 natural alternatives to flu shots

 
Before we go over some of the most effective natural flu fighters, don't forget about the power of good hand hygiene – it's probably the most effective way that you can naturally reduce your risk of getting the flu. Whenever someone near you coughs or sneezes, you're exposed to respiratory droplets that may carry the flu. You can pick up the flu directly by breathing in these droplets.

Or, more often the droplets settle on a surface, you touch the surface, and then you touch your mouth or nose, and the flu enters your system through that route. So be careful out there. Wash your hands frequently with soap and warm water. It's easy to do, and it's free. Don't use hand sanitizers! Most of them are alcohol based and have been known to cause problems, but that's another story.

Now let's take a look at what you can do to get your immune system in fighting form:

Echinacea is a type of plant in the daisy family, has been shown to boost the immune system by activating your white blood cells. It also increases interferon production which can specifically help fight off viral infections, including the flu. One study showed that an Echinacea compound herbal tea was effective for the relief of flu symptoms if taken at the earliest onset. Evidence also shows that if you take Echinacea about a week before being exposed to the flu virus, you may prevent yourself from getting sick.

Zinc is an essential mineral and has a role in multiple biochemical processes. It is found in a variety of foods, such as poultry, red meat, dairy products, whole grains, nuts, beans, and some types of seafood. Your body has no specialized storage system for zinc, so it needs it on a daily basis either from your diet or from a supplement.

Medical evidence suggests that zinc lozenges can shorten the duration of flu symptoms, such as cough, sore throat, and nasal drainage. It may also have some preventive benefits against developing a respiratory viral infection, such as the flu, in the first place. The average recommended dose is 15-25 mg per day but not more since too much zinc can actually worsen your immunity. 

Garlic has been used to help prevent some illnesses for centuries. It has powerful antioxidant effects, which can help to stabilize your cells and your DNA. By doing so, it can actually improve your immunity.

Aged garlic extract has been shown to be helpful in preventing the flu and reducing the recovery period (by about a day), according to one medical study. However, it may not be as good at treating flu symptoms once the infection occurs. Be careful about taking it if you are taking any blood-thinning medications (including aspirin) since garlic has blood-thinning properties and can increase your risk for bleeding problems. Of course, check with your doctor for your best advice.

Vitamin C. Medical literature suggests that taking 1000-2000 mg if vitamin C daily on a consistent basis, rather than as needed, can help shorten the duration and severity of upper respiratory infections in general.

Ginseng / Cold-Fx. Cold-Fx is a proprietary extract of the roots of North American ginseng and has been shown in studies to prevent respiratory infections. One study showed that when seniors with good immune systems take Cold-Fx, it helps to reduce the risk of respiratory infections by 48% and can reduce their duration by 55%. It was also found to be a safe natural therapy. 

Essential Oils. The combination of 3 essential oils – eucalyptus, alpha-pinene from pine, and d-limonene from citrus – has been shown to be helpful in treating acute and chronic inflammation of the lungs, and so may be promising in helping you to fight off the flu. This combination comes in oral form and is recommended to be taken at a dose of 300 mg, three to four times daily.

Probiotics. Probiotics ("pro-life") are bacteria that are good for you. Scientific evidence shows that this type of bacteria can improve your immune system by increasing certain T cells, which can fight off infection, or by helping to reverse some vitamin deficiencies. You can find probiotics in cultured dairy products – like kefir or yogurt. They are also available in different types of oral supplements.

One clinical study showed that a probiotic bacteria, Lactobacillus fermentum, helped to improve the effectiveness of the flu vaccines. Other studies have shown probiotic benefits, when taken with multivitamins and minerals, in helping to improve the duration and severity of flu symptoms. It's also essential to take a course of probiotics following any antibiotic treatment. After a course of antibiotics you are especially vulnerable to the flu and other illnesses – probiotics can help protect you.

Another great supplement to help strengthen and bolster your immune system is a product from Enriching Gifts called Sterol Max. This is one of our essential "medicine cabinet" items.